Are Robot Lawn Mowers Safe? Extremely Good Article!

I often hear people ask “Are robot lawn mowers safe”?

What if I told you they can save lives?

They save lives by replacing traditional gas-powered lawnmowers and reducing pollution from garden machinery.

Traditional gas-powered lawnmowers are very dirty, producing large amounts of harmful pollution that cause a large number of deaths due to low air quality around the world.

They produce large amounts of harmful gasses and pollutants that go into the atmosphere causing a lot of serious health issues for people all around the world. The World Health Organisation estimates that around 7 million people die from health issues caused by bad air quality each year.

This is an unbelievable statistic and really shows the impact that we are all having not just on the air in our cities but on the world overall.

So why are lawnmowers such a problem?

Because they have little to no emissions controls on their exhaust. Unlike cars that have very stringent standards of what types and amounts of gasses are permitted to be released from the exhaust pipe.

Small engines found in lawnmowers and other lawn equipment are simply much dirtier than the larger ones found in cars with much more control over the emissions. 

Lawnmower pollution is a major problem around the world

An estimated 6.3 Million Tonnes of Harmful pollution are produced by lawn care products including lawnmowers each year according to a report by the EPA.

According to the EPA the US released about 70 million tonnes of pollution into the atmosphere in 2019.

This is a sobering fact that many people are unaware of and that it could affect the health of so many people. This is also one issue that affects developed nations a lot due to the large number of manicured spaces that we have.

In the USA 60,200 People Died of Poor Air Quality in 2019

According to Statista.com, in the United States, 60200 people died from air pollution in 2019 alone. 

The number of people that die simply because of the poor quality of the air around the world is truly a scary figure. This is not an issue affecting some other country or somewhere else in the world. It is quite literally something happening in our own backyards.

This would mean that 4% of these deaths or approximately 2400 people died in 2019 due to air pollution from lawn machinery that uses fossil fuels.

The pollution is in our backyards

Lawnmowers release large unfiltered quantities of harmful gasses and pollutants into the air right next to your home.

Unlike cars that have significantly more control over emissions and release the pollution generally further away from homes. Lawnmowers fly completely under the radar and cause real harm from the amounts of harmful pollution that they release inside communities very close to homes.

Won’t using electric garden tools just move the issue to the powerplant?

It is possible, but as more and more of the power we consume is from clean sources then this will improve.

1. You can buy your electricity from green sources like solar and wind with zero emissions. That way you know that the electricity you are using is not coming from co2 producing sources like coal and natural gas.
2. Even if your power is still coming from a fossil fuel power plant it will still increase the efficiency, meaning fewer greenhouse gasses will be released for the same work done.
   Additionally, the harmful pollution will not be released in your backyard.
   Finally, when pollution is centralized in a power plant it is much easier to control and clean up than when millions of homeowners all over the country are causing the problem.

So there are several reasons why it is worth changing over to all-electric machinery at home even if the power you are getting is still coming from fossil fuels.

Summary Are Robot Lawn Mowers Safe?

This is a real issue, and the only way to tackle this is to stop using the machines that are causing the issue.

Traditional lawn mowers can’t be fixed, while there may be other proposed solutions that help, like ethanol fuel or biodiesel, this is just a stop-gap and we should just be transitioning to electric alternatives.

While robot lawn mowers and other electric lawn equipment come with their own environmental challenges it is a big step in the right direction.

The answer is electric lawn equipment, electric trimmers, electric edgers, electric mowers, and yes also robotic mowers.